Bonds Face a Bigger Threat Than the Fed as Global Rates Climb Save Translate 5:12 Takeaways by Bloomberg AI As investors debate whether and when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, market expectations for further tightening are building around the world — and spelling trouble for bonds. Traders see borrowing costs rising faster in Japan, Canada, the UK and the euro zone than in the US over the next year. Of the 32 swap markets tracked by Bloomberg, two-thirds are priced for rate hikes, with South Korea leading the pack at more than 100 basis points. It marks a shift from the Fed-dominated rate cycle of recent years. This time, central banks are facing overlapping pressures from higher oil prices from the Iran war, heavy government spending and an AI investment boom that’s supercharging growth. Inflation across countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recently hit a two-year high. That leaves investors with an uncomfortable prospect: bonds...
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Central Banks Are Stuck in a Rinse-and-Repeat Cycle of Crises By becoming market makers of last resort, policymakers are pumping up leverage and risk By The Bank of England in London. Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/ZUMA Press Central banks may be accidentally subsidizing government borrowing through their efforts to prevent a repeat of past market blowups, and policymakers are starting to worry that anticrisis lending facilities could even be interfering with their own monetary policy. The source of the problem is the switch from central banks being the lender of last resort to, in 2008 and 2020, also being market makers of last resort, ensuring corporate—and government—debt markets keep functioning. During a crisis, support is often essential to prevent a downward spiral that destroys the financial system. But backstopping markets removes a key risk and encourages more borrowing—especially for the hedge funds that now own trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasurys. “Ironically, vulnerabil...
Taiwan’s War Games Are Spilling Into Everyday Life The island’s annual military exercises are becoming broader and more realistic, reflecting efforts to prepare both the armed forces and civilians for conflict. Soldiers take part in the annual 10-day Han Kuang military drills in Taiwan on Aug. 9, 2026. Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg August 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM GMT+10 Updated on August 14, 2026 at 5:56 PM GMT+10 Save Translate 7:57 Dozens of flatbed trucks carrying CM-21 armored vehicles and M60A3 tanks rumbled through tunnels carved into the cliffs of Taiwan’s east coast. A typhoon had just brushed the island’s north, and soldiers sweated in the humid night air. The convoy was heading north toward Yilan, where the armed forces were rehearsing for a Chinese landing that would require reinforcements from Hualien, two hours south. Civilian traffic was halted on a major highway, with cars backed up at checkpoints waiting for the column to pass. It was the fifth day of Taiwan’s an...
The death of reading puts the world in a perilous place Books and newspapers are increasingly giving way to social media content as the habit of reading fades. This isn’t just dumbing down, it’s a threat to democracy, writes James Marriott Donald Trump gets nearly all his news from screens and is a master of social media. Next image › In one of my favourite clips of Donald Trump, the president is asked about the Bible. Which is his favourite verse, a journalist wants to know. “I wouldn’t want to get into it”, Trump says. “The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.” The interviewer presses him on a question that seems easier: does he prefer the Old or the New Testament? “Probably equal,” Trump says. “I think it’s just incredible.” Donald Trump is not a reader — of the Bible or, we are reliably informed, of any book. According to his former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.” ...
Pandemic lockdowns never ended for some people Financial Times Europe15 Aug 2026John Burn-Mur doch john.burn-mur doch@ft.com Only occa sion ally in my work do I come across a stat istic so aston ish ing that it stopsme in my tracks. Earlier this week was one of those times. While explor ing data from the Amer ican Time Use Sur vey, which draws on detaileddiar ies to track how and with whom people spend every minute of a ran domlyselec ted day, I came across the fol low ing: on an aver age day in 2023, one in 10young Amer ic ans aged between 19 and 24 did not spend a single minute inter act ingface to face with another per son. Much has been writ ten about the decline in social ising among young people overrecent years, but these ana lyses — includ ing my own — have ten ded to focus onsoci etal aver ages. Doing so misses a crit ical part of this story: whether we’re talk ingabout the long shadow of pan demic lock downs, the increas ingly enthralling digitalenvir on ment or intensi fy in...
There is no good deal to be made with Iran For Trump, the deal itself is the victory. The fixation has served him well at times: The Abraham Accords , normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab nations, have largely held up since Trump’s first term. But it has led him to a dead end in Iran. The best path forward is an older time-tested approach: containment. Trump’s war of choice against Iran, launched in February , has been a strategic failure by any measure. A decapitation strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not trigger regime collapse. Iran’s missiles remain a potent threat across the region, and its proxies remain active. Its nuclear program was severely set back by last summer’s strikes and the renewed bombing that began in February, but the fighting since then has strengthened Iran’s ambitions to get the bomb. And its government now asserts control over the Strait of Hormuz. The core of June’s memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran...
It Was a Great Scam While It Lasted Aug. 13, 2026 Credit... Illustration by The New York Times; source photographs by Kaya & Blank for The New York Times and H. Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images Listen · 5:50 min Share full article 1.2k By Peter Navarro Mr. Navarro is an assistant to President Trump and senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. The recliner really is made in Vietnam. The plant, just north of Ho Chi Minh City, is legit — it’s got thousands of workers making real furniture. The motor inside the recliner is another story. The motor arrives from China finished, branded and boxed, shipped by the container load from a factory in the same corporate family as the furniture maker. Workers unbox it and bolt it into the recliner. Within 90 days the recliner sails from Vung Tau and lands at Norfolk, Va., where the Chinese mechanism is declared as Vietnamese. If the paperwork holds, that “Made in Vietnam” claim erases 25 percentage points of American tariff that would ...